Before and After: A Tudor Revival

A revived 1920’s tudor in Mountain Brook, Alabama

byHaskell Harris

April 12, 2016

The Place: A revived 1920’s tudor in Mountain Brook, Alabama

Before.

After.

The History: The Tudor style became popular in Birmingham, in part when developer Robert Jemison, Jr. brought it to the Magic City in the early twentieth century. Mountain Brook, the community he developed in 1929, is full of excellent examples, like this one on Country Club Drive. “I loved the old house,” says architect Jeff Dungan of Jeffrey Dungan Architects, “but it was totally outdated. It had old wiring and had to be taken down to the studs inside.”

The new entry.

The Revival: Dungan kept the interior true to the period but added a little more space for a den addition. Outside, the architect added a guest cottage connected to the original structure by a porte cochere. And he designed other cosmetic updates, including a new entryway and terrace, and steel windows that flood the den with natural light.

The new den complete with steel windows.

The new porte cochere.

Our Favorite Part: Dungan and his team went to great lengths to match the additions with the slate roof and existing stone of the 1920s house to keep the project authentic to the original architecture. “We found a slate roof from an old farm in Virginia and had it shipped to Alabama,” says Dungan. “We found the matching sandstone locally in Oneonta and three stone masons worked sunrise to sunset for a year to repoint and patch the original and add the new portions.”